Abstract

Gabor first proposed holography in 1948 as a means to experimentally record the amplitude and phase of scattered wavefronts, relative to a direct unscattered wave, and to use such a “hologram” to directly image atomic structure. But imaging at atomic resolution has not yet been possible in the way he proposed. Much more recently, Szöke in 1986 noted that photoexcited atoms can emit photoelectron or fluorescent x-ray wavefronts that are scattered by neighboring atoms, thus yielding the direct and scattered wavefronts as detected in the far field that can then be interpreted as holographic in nature. By now, several algorithms for directly reconstructing three-dimensional atomic images from electron holograms have been proposed (e.g. by Barton) and successfully tested against experiment and theory. Very recently, Tegze and Faigel, and Gog et al. have recorded experimental x-ray fluorescence holograms, and these are found to yield atomic images that are more free of the kinds of aberrations caused by the non-ideal emission or scattering of electrons. The basic principles of these holographic atomic imaging methods are reviewed, including illustrative applications of the reconstruction algorithms to both theoretical and experimental electron and x-ray holograms. We also discuss the prospects and limitations of these newly emerging atomic structural probes.